Forbidden Kiss (2 page)

Chapter Two

Strong arms wrapped around her, containing the shakes that threatened to spill her onto the cold concrete floor. In seconds, Montgomery had rushed to her as a full-blown panic attack descended.

Jule took big gulps of air, trying to calm her racing heart. Corded muscle flexed under her fingers and her nails dug furrows into his arms.

Montgomery lowered them both to the couch, pulling her close until she practically sat in his lap.

“Slow it down. One breath. Then another,” the words resonating against her cheek where it lay on his chest.

A hand cupped her head, stroking her hair in soft rhythm.

“Ms. Casale, are you all right?”

Feeling scared and exposed, Jule wanted crawl in a hole and hide, but the breath had been stolen from her lungs.

Sweet Jesus, where had that dagger come from?
It seemed her mind had conjured forth her worst nightmare.

Unable to form the words, Jule held up a finger asking him to wait. She closed her eyes and concentrated on her breathing.

In. Out. In. Out.

After a couple of minutes, in which he didn’t say anything, just kept holding her tightly, she got a grip.

And then a new sensation washed over her. Embarrassment.

She’d just had a major panic attack in front of a complete stranger. If he didn’t think she was nuts before, he would now.

And of course, she noticed right then every hard muscle pressing against her body. Every exhale of breath. Low grade tingles threatened to upgrade at a moment’s notice.

Could this afternoon get any more humiliating?

“What brings them on?” His voice sounded matter of fact and clinical.

She appreciated the shower of reality.

Slowly, Jule sat up, taking a deep breath. Reaching for the drink he’d sat on the glass topped table, she got it down—all of it—in less than three swallows.

The warmth felt good.

Her reaction to the dagger was wholly unexpected and Jule had no way to logically explain it. No real basis for the fear.

Other than she knew she had been stabbed with it at some point in history.

Yeah, right. Reincarnation
.

But there it was.

“It’s all the weapons. I have this totally whacked phobia and when I saw that dagger…” She pointed to the alcohol cabinet where the dagger lay, and tried to laugh it off, but the panic in her head couldn’t be wiped away with a giggle or a wave of her hand.

“You weren’t afraid earlier,” he said, watching her intently. Apparently, her little episode had finally broken through his indifference. Or maybe it was the way she was reacting to him.

Ah. Maybe if she played the submissive to his dominant, she’d get more of what she needed: information.

“No. I’ve lived my whole life with this and I’ve learned to control it for the most part, but every now and then…”

He didn’t ask any more questions and they sat in silence for a minute. Strange, but somehow the action comforted her. He knew, without really knowing her at all, not to pry into a subject she didn’t have logical answers for. Jule appreciated his simply knowing, but not talking.

“Thank you for your patience. And please, call me Jule. You witnessed one of my freak-outs, might as well lose the formality.”

He nodded and reclined on the sofa, his arm stretching out along the back until his fingers nearly brushed her shoulder.

Wishing to feel the touch of his calloused fingers again, Jule cleared her throat and got down to business. “Will you please tell me what you know about the sword in the painting?”

“It’s not a sword. It’s a rapier. A type of sword designed for thrusting—as into a body. It has a double-edged blade, a hemispherical cup over the grip, and straight quillons. Venetian. Fourteenth century.”

Jule grabbed for the small notebook she always carried in her bag and wrote down most of what he said. Some of it escaped her. She asked for clarification.

“Quillons?” she asked, looking up. She waited for him to go on, but he didn’t. He seemed lost in thought, still and quiet.

“Mr. Montgomery, please. I—” she began.

“A sword guard between hilt and blade. It protects the hand from slipping down the blade.” He answered in clipped monotones.

“The Venetian Republic was quite large during the Renaissance. Could you be more specific as to the sword’s origins?”

Goodness, did she really sound so formal following the lap dance she’d almost given him? Kudos to her for getting her crap together so quickly!

“Jule. I understand you have a job to do. Helping the art world,” he said sardonically. “But you should go home and rest after your—attack. Allow me to consult some of my sources, I might have more information for you in the morning.”

Might—keyword there. No. She couldn’t walk away from this meeting empty handed.

“Why don’t you consult your source now? I can wait,” she said, crossing her legs and settling in.

He changed tactics. “Why did my dagger upset you?” A hint of curiosity edged his voice.

Quid pro quo.

He’d really believe she was nuts if she told him how she felt about that knife.

He must have sensed her attitude because he slid his untouched drink beside her empty glass.
Her move.

This situation might seem weird, but, ah, hell, who cared?

She grabbed the glass and got it down in two swallows. Though her insides warmed nicely, the cool air in the room provided counterbalance driving her courage up a notch.

“Well, it’s like this. I know that dagger. I know the look, feel, and weight of it like I know my own body.”

Heat rose in her face as his gaze lowered, taking in that body, lingering ever so slightly on her breasts—or did she imagine it? His gaze found hers again after a few seconds, a small smile lifting the corners of his lips.

Where before there had been no emotion, no life, now a light burned so bright in his eyes, she turned away.

“That dagger has been in my family’s possession for over 600 years. You couldn’t possibly have
ever
seen it.” His voice scalded her with heated accusation. He reached out to take her wrist, the pressure light but enough to catch her attention.

“You’re right, of course,” she said soothingly. “It’s crazy. Probably the result of my overactive imagination. I’ve spent too much time with my head stuck in the fifteenth century.”

Montgomery scared her with this new intensity. If eyes could burn a human soul, she’d be dead. It was as if he were trying to read something in her.

Quiet reigned throughout the gallery. The sound of her breathing echoed loudly in her ears, the only thing indicating life in the stony cold.

It must have been loud enough for him to hear as well because he released her arm. Not quick in apology, but slow and sure. His fingers glided across the top of her wrist, leaving a trail of heat in their wake.

He regarded Jule with an intensity that blurred the line between his iris and pupil, making his gaze a dark and solid penetrating power.

“Follow me,” he said, reaching some internal decision.

He stood swiftly in one fluid movement, while she grappled with her bag, notebook, and her composure. Jule watched him—well, his head and shoulders at any rate—cross to a second door at the rear of the gallery. He stopped and looked back when he discovered she didn’t follow.

“Jule,” his voice was low, velvet edged, yet strong. The sound of her name on his lips made her chest tight and her loneliness seem unbearable. She desperately wanted a confidant on this project. A partner she could turn to for support.

“I mean you no harm.” When he saw she still wasn’t moving, he tried another approach. “I want to show you something that may help you in your research.”

Could he be the partner she’d longed for? Could she trust him?

Her legs felt a little rubbery as she made up the distance between them, but found the liquor helped to keep everything inside quiet and secure. The intensity she’d seen earlier in his eyes fled, replaced by simple strength.

They climbed a set of old concrete stairs, heavily worn by booted feet from the past. Montgomery moved with the graceful power of a predator, but favored his right side ever so slightly. Jule wouldn’t have noticed except when they rounded a corner, she caught a tightening around his lips as he gripped the railing.

When they reached the top, Montgomery led them through a thick metal sliding door into a sitting room decorated much the same as the downstairs gallery. Bare concrete punctuated by minimalist black leather and chrome. The walls, however, were blessedly free of lethal art.

“These are my quarters,” he said by way of explanation.

Cold, sterile, and unlived in.

“You live here?”

“When I am in town,” Montgomery said.

She started to follow him through the main room and stopped when she spied a round indentation in one of the couch’s cushions. Several strands of pet hair peppered the leather.

A man who liked animals couldn’t be all bad. He had to be kind. Tender. Trustworthy. Maybe the Dane Rescue society had judged him unfairly. And a man with that lovely mouth couldn’t be all hardness and no fun.

Jule hurried to catch up and passed through a bleak kitchen, to the rear of the loft. A bank of windows along two walls looked out over the Chicago River and the shining lights of the city beyond. It provided an incredible view. Twinkling lights from incoming barges moved on the dark water.

The beauty almost compensated for the stark surroundings. She turned from the view to find Montgomery standing on the other side of the room watching her, analyzing her reaction.

“Beautiful view,” she said, casting her gaze around the room rather than meeting his. A cherry chest of drawers stood along the wall they had just passed through and a low leather topped banquette lined the wall behind Montgomery.

Nothing else.

Jule looked past Montgomery to the open door of the bathroom beyond. Yep, they stood in a bedroom suite, but no bed. Maybe he slept on the couch?

“This is what I brought you to see,” he said, stepping sharply back to reveal a framed canvas. A tomb scene, darkly painted save for a single candle casting a muted glow on two draped figures lying on a raised dais. The figures entwined as if embracing, but the ashen color of the exposed arms and hands revealed the lovers as dead.

Eerie. The faces of the dead couple were shadowed, with only hints of hair and cheek. A lone chalice, empty, lay beneath the dais, partially obscuring a sword resting on the floor of the tomb.

The very same sword in Jule’s Anonymous painting.

Chapter Three

Jule Casale was speechless for the first time all night. Rom almost smiled. The woman had moxie. He’d give her that. And despite his effort to turn her back out into the night, she stayed, challenging his non-answers with ever more questions.

“Who are they?” she questioned, changing angles, examining the painting from both sides before stepping back, only to zoom in again.

Rom knew the identities of the couple, but wouldn’t reveal their secret to anyone, especially not a determined art historian with connections to some of the city’s more notorious criminals, including her own father. While he was a master at constructing past identities to shield his own truth, a skilled researcher like Jule would figure out his ruse.

Jule’s inspection went on for some time and Rom watched her, turning over unpleasant thoughts in his head.

Her father, Edmondo Casale, was not just a newspaper story of corruption and fraudulent real estate deals. He was in fact, the reason behind Rom’s recent warehouse explosion. The authorities ruled it arson, but he was convinced Casale had destroyed the warehouse to cover up an embezzlement scheme to defraud the government of millions of dollars.

Evidence eliminated. Case closed.

But yet here was his oldest daughter. Why did she force herself into his home with this story about the painting and the dagger? Rom wanted to see how far she would take the act and decided to show her his painting, to see how she reacted.

“Not an unprecedented subject, but still, unusual,” Jule said, more to herself. He didn’t think she even remembered he stood in the room.

She didn’t notice his silent appraisal. A woman wrapped up in the moment. She exuded resolution and determination, in spite of her show of vulnerability earlier. And damned if she didn’t seem the most honest thing he had encountered in years—not withstanding her family allegiance.

Slight, with midnight hair twined tightly at her nape and conservative clothing—though the excellent tailoring allowed him an idea of the curvy figure and full breasts beneath—the woman was something of a conundrum.

But Rom looked closer, penetrating the persona she wielded like a weapon keeping people at a distance. Her profile in repose was perfect. Patrician features with exotic, high cheekbones and a mouth curving temptingly at the corners. Her chin, when determined as she was now, thrust forward, revealing a regal neck on fine shoulders.

Diamond stud earrings flashed through loose tendrils of night sky hair as she turned to face him, at last sensing the overriding quiet. She stared at him, refusing to back down under his scrutiny.

She doth teach the torches to burn bright.

Such a brave face. She didn’t want to be here with him. It was written in the rigid set of her shoulders and the resolved slant of her heart shaped chin.

“I’m wondering about the significance of the rose here in the upper right hand corner?” she asked, mere inches from Rom’s elbow where he stood leaning against the wall.

A rose, just coming into bloom, stood proudly on its fragile stem, three of its petals opening to the light.

“I don’t know. I’ve often wondered myself.”
A warning for sure from old Friar Lawrence, the monk responsible for Rom’s condition, but against what? The fragile nature of young love?

“There is a rose in my painting as well. Same corner, although it’s a new bud with its first petal unfurling, like it’s reaching out to the bright sunlight streaming onto the canvas.”

Rom glanced at the painting hanging on his wall, at each of the visible rose petals open to the sun’s warmth. His painting had nine petals. Jule’s had one.

It’s a message. It’s a dream. Find the truth.
He heard his old friend, Mercutio’s voice, as if from a great distance. The night and appearance of Jule had dredged up old memories and long dead friends. The past whispered to Rom.

What had Lawrence done all those centuries ago? What could he need to tell him in a series of cryptic paintings, that he hadn’t in Verona the night Rom’s wife had died?

He watched Jule peer closely at the brushwork on the canvas. The fine brushstrokes of the artist and the brilliant colors, especially in the Capulet red and Montague blue, invited her breathless inspection.

“Seems to be by the same Mr. Anonymous. Style is similar,” she said, her nose inches from the 600-year-old paint.

If Rom were an artist, he would have painted her in that moment. Her face full of awe and wonder, glowing with the excitement of a newfound discovery and the expectation of uncovering a truth.

Her cheeks were still flushed from the panic attack earlier, her lips rosy, full and parted.

The face of an innocent, unlined by grief and hardship. She reminded him suddenly of a Botticelli painting, the face of Venus at her birth.

A stab of desire opened low in his stomach. A passion he’d lost long ago, but remembered with a painful clarity.

The emotion engulfed him, roasting him from the inside out. He forced his fists to relax and flattened his palms against the wall for support. Swallowing the knot of heated memories, he forced them down, buried it so deep, he was numb.

Numb he could deal with. Numb he knew well.

When he could speak, he said, “Maybe it is the same painter.”

“Could be,” she said, “Do you know if there are others?”

“I bought it off another dealer. That’s all I know.” If she found him irksome and unhelpful, she might not seek him out again. And he wouldn’t be faced with such tender feelings for someone so young, fragile, and full of life.

Irritation sparked in eyes the rich blue of lapis lazuli, with twinkling flecks of light.

“There isn’t much more I can tell you. The sword is a nobleman’s weapon, a style designed by many swordsmiths in Italy.” Extending a hand to the open doorway, Rom waited for her to follow his silent request. “Please, Ms. Casale, I have an appointment for which I am late.”

Faced with his formal dismissal, Jule had no choice but to leave. “You can call me day or night should you learn anything new, Mr. Montgomery. I keep a home office and often work from there.”

He watched her march through the open doorway and back through the empty kitchen, anger heavy in each purposeful step. She didn’t stop at the entry, but swung through the door and headed back downstairs to the gallery, her boots slapping the concrete as she went.

He did have a meeting with his attorney, although Ben would content himself at Carl’s Bar with a scotch at the ready. Their business was old business and could wait a few minutes longer.

Rom hung back several seconds staring at the fateful rose in the painting, allowing Jule to burn off her frustration. Chances were, if he tried to convince her the pursuit was a waste of time, she would react in a less than favorable manner. No positive result would come at forcing her back against the wall.

Manipulative? Perhaps. Smart? Definitely.

When he reached the lower level, she was bundled back under her raincoat. The beautiful, slender neck he’d admired moments ago hidden beneath a dull colored scarf wrapped double and knotted tightly.

Just as well.

“I’ll be in touch Mr. Montgomery, to see if you remember anything else that might help.” She tried to mask how futile she thought the effort, but then shrugged in resignation.

What a shame to douse such vitality and interest. He could well imagine her passion both in private and at work.

She flipped her hood up to protect her head from the wind.

“With your permission, I would like to come back by next week and examine your painting further. Compare the two for more clues.”

“Fine. Call before you drop by,” it came out harsh and final and Jule recoiled from his reproach. He denied the regret tightening his chest.

She nodded stiffly and reached for the door, but for some reason he later couldn’t fathom, he grabbed her hand.

A fine tremor of anger vibrated along her skin.

He’d done his job well.

Pulling back the cuff of her coat, he bent and pressed his lips to her pulse point. Her scent consumed him: achingly sweet and full of life. He drank in the steady throb, the lulling hub-bub of blood pumping in her veins, at last lifting his lips from a final kiss.

She stood still, a look between arousal and surprise filling her face. He broke the spell.

“I truly hope you find what you are looking for, Jule.” Releasing her hand, he caught the knob and opened the room to the night. Rain fell soft and steady outside his front door, the street nearly deserted at the dinner hour.

There wasn’t another car or a taxi in sight.

“Would you like me to call a cab?” The thought of her walking any distance alone had him feeling remarkably protective.

With her breath visible in the cold, Jule left the doorway, pulling her hood tight. “I’ll, ah, walk for a while and then catch a cab. I’m in no hurry to get home,” she said, her voice floating back to him.

Maybe he’d been too effective at dismissing her. Banning her from his presence. She didn’t seem excited about the concept of going home. He wondered why.

Shutting the door behind him, Rom stepped onto the sidewalk. “I’ll walk with you then, until you hail a cab.”

He waited for her to lead the way, but she just stopped and stared at him like he’d lost his mind.

“Don’t you need a coat?”

Rom looked down. He stood in the wind, on the open street in his shirtsleeves, and he hadn’t even noticed the weather.

He heard a faint voice inside his head. A voice from long ago.

She’s got you, friend. A great distraction to your constant inner turmoil. See what the night brings.

He was afraid she was her father’s daughter and inherently off limits.

Ah, Merc, Rom thought. Not now. Not this one.